Spaces and Places – How to ‘Marie Kondo’ your home

If you happen to be one of the lovely people reading our blog today, then we’d assume with some degree of certainty that you’re interested in decluttering and/or saving space. Naturally, we also think you’ll have come across the name ‘Marie Kondo’ before.

If you happen to be one of those people who haven’t heard the name before, then please pay attention – this blog could be about to make your life much simpler!

Marie Kondo is a popular Japanese organisational consultant, whose revolutionary approach to decluttering has quickly gained her recognition all around the globe due to the many millions of homes her methods have resonated with. Kondo’s approach is built around two unique mantras, both of which we’ll run through now:

Mantra 1: “Does it spark joy?”

This is quite a self-explanatory method, but one that people very rarely seem to follow through with. Does that pile of books in the corner actually do anything for you? If the answer is no, simply pack up and move them along. Apply that line of thinking to your entire home and you’re already on the right path to minimal housekeeping.

Mantra 2: Make everything accessible

Once you’ve got rid of everything in your home that doesn’t bring the feels, what should you do with what’s left? Well, Marie Kondo says that everything should now be made visible. Any items of clothing, books, memories or anything else that remains, place each item where it’s visible, accessible and easy to get hold of then put back later.

More Marie Kondo tips

Marie Kondo also offers up a few other new methods to think about when decluttering, such as tackling the clutter by categories first rather than by room – the idea behind this being that by tackling (for example) all of your clothes at once, you’ll rein in the clutter straight away rather than having it follow you from room-to-room. Another tip mentions the idea of ‘respecting your belongings’, I.E not squashing everything up in wardrobes or chests. Other recommendations include folding clothes into chests rather than hanging, as well as actively trying to enjoy purging your old items rather than viewing the task as a chore.

“But what if I have too many items that spark joy for me to make accessible in the home?”

This is where Spaces and Places come in! For those of you with so much joy that one home can’t possibly take the load once you’ve decluttered, we can offer affordable and secure self-storage facilities in Manchester. You can rest easy once you choose us, safe in the knowledge that your little (or big) bundle of joy will be well taken care of from start to finish.